Hi, I've just replaced the sill and wall studs and am about to start rebuilding the wall. Just a quick question about the vapor barrier. The vapor barrier must be completely sealed. The vapor barrier should be directly inside the drywall that the interior wall will consist of. When I screw up the drywall to the studs, I'm going to puncture the vapor barrier. Does this matter? Or should the vapor barrier be installed in another way so that it only sits between the studs and not over them?
One common method when building nowadays is to move the vapor barrier inside the wall by constructing a so-called installation zone. This can consist of, for example, 45*45 studs that are nailed perpendicular to the other studs, and then that space is also insulated. This way, all electrical and other installations can be placed in the wall without the risk of puncturing the vapor barrier. Additionally, if you cross-brace as I described, the wall becomes more energy-efficient because it breaks thermal bridges. However, one should keep in mind that the vapor barrier should never lie more than a maximum of 1/3 of the total wall thickness inside the wall.
That's how I planned to do it, but won't I nail or screw through the vapor barrier then? Because the vapor barrier will be against the outer wall studs and I will attach the 45x45 to them.
You should nail the 45s there, so it's inevitable that you'll get holes in the plastic, but the plastic is clamped, so there will never be any problems as it will be sufficiently tight. The point is that once you've done this, you never need to puncture the plastic when, for example, you hang something on the wall. If the plastic had been just inside the boards, you would have done that, and the hole wouldn't have been clamped against anything.
Ok, great, thanks for the help!